Mohammad Reza Miri, a member of the telecommunications ministry committee that filters Internet content, said today that the ban on Gmail was an accidental result of trying to block YouTube.

"Unfortunately, we do not yet have enough technical knowhow to differentiate between these two services," Miri told the Mehr news agency. "We wanted to block YouTube and Gmail was also blocked, which was involuntary."

Either way, a ban on YouTube is still a priority for the Iranian government..

"We absolutely do not want YouTube to be accessible," Miri added, according to AFP. "That is why the telecommunications ministry is seeking a solution to fix the problem to block YouTube under the HTTPS protocol while leaving Gmail accessible. That will soon happen."

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Journalist, software trainer, and Web developer Lance Whitney writes columns and reviews for CNET, Computer Shopper, Microsoft TechNet, and other technology sites. His first book, "Windows 8 Five Minutes at a Time," was published by Wiley & Sons in November 2012.
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